


idlewild

by darkcomedylateshow



Category: Firewatch (Video Game), Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Wilderness, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:01:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22046041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkcomedylateshow/pseuds/darkcomedylateshow
Summary: He’s become obsessed with his voice, which always sounds like it’s breaking, like he’s letting him in on a guilty secret he’s thrilled to be sharing. It’s a lifeline.
Relationships: Jared Dunn/Richard Hendricks
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	idlewild

Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to some stranger named Jared before he dies. 

Maybe he doesn’t want to put some stranger through the trauma of finding him dead. He would only be missing for a few days at the most, anyway, which defeated the whole point of taking this job. The plan was to disappear. Before too long, his body would be identified — they’d just have to look up the new researcher who had gone radio silent. His car, registered in his name, was parked right at the edge of the lot, a day-long hike from camp. 

He’s been here for forty-eight hours, and barely slept a fraction of that. In his mental map, he can place where in inland California he is, but knows it isn’t accurate. He’d slept in a motel in Mount Shasta, drove two more hours on a dirt road, and traversed the corner of the national forest on foot, carrying his backpack, sleeping roll, and three months worth of toiletries. The parks department was supposed to provide everything else — he’d have to get the food from supply drops, and manage his own station.

But he still couldn’t sleep. When he took the job, he imagined that he would be completely alone. But he wasn’t, and it rattled him. 

He pulls out his yellow walkie-talkie and looks at it again. This is the only link he has to the outside world: a CB radio with a wireless system that looks like it’s from about 1994. The base station takes up most of his desk space, and the walkie is equally inconvenient to carry. It’s from Radioshack, and is made of waterproof yellow plastic, with a red monitor light, two dials, and a switch that is mildly sticky. 

* * *

“Hi. Is anyone—"

“Hi. Are you Richard?”

“Yes. Hi. Are you—“ 

“I’m Jared, your supervisor?” His voice is friendly, and sort of crackles at the end of his sentences. Or maybe that’s just the sound the radio makes. “Any questions you have, let me know. I’m always around, more or less.”

“Great. That’s great. I’ve got a lot to learn,” he starts to say, and then trails off, absolutely blanking on what he was going to talk about. 

“You sound tired.” 

“I am. But after a hike I get this kind of — body high? Where I can’t sleep. Anxiety thing.” 

“Is that why you came here?” Jared asks.

“How do you mean?”

“I’m sorry. That’s probably a little invasive—"

“No, it’s okay —“ 

“It’s just. I know Susan conducted the interview, but I read your resume, and you seemed so well adjusted. I mean, Stanford..."

“Well, I dropped out, so."

“But still. This job is physically challenging and emotionally isolating. People don’t really come here unless they want to be left alone. Which doesn’t inherently mean there’s some sort of — requisite trauma or damage that automatically qualifies you. But it’s a safe space. For those kinds of people.”

“Damage,” Richard says. 

“That’s a loaded term. I didn’t mean to drop it on you. Sorry, this isn’t where I thought I was going with all this, I was trying to…"

“Really, it’s fine.” 

“But I do want to know.” His voice is sweet, but intentionally bureaucratic. “Since we’ll be communicating. Why do you want to be here?” 

“I — I don’t know. Still figuring it out.”

“That’s okay.” Jared pauses. “I can leave you alone, if you want.” 

“No. No, that’s alright. I’m just going to walk around before it gets dark.”

* * *

While he’s staring at the walkie, it lights up and crackles, and it startles him. “Richard? There’s a storm coming in. How far away are you from base?”

“I don’t know,” he says, pocketing the radio. “I’ll head back.” 

“Be safe, alright? The lookout at the south point told me he just spotted some lightning.” 

Standing near the edge of a cliff, Richard can see the clouds rolling in already from the other side of the canyon. Along the edge, the rocks are worn down and it would be easy to lose your footing. It’s already dangerous, exploring unfamiliar terrain at dusk without a guide or a flashlight. 

But he has fantasies to entertain. Such as: how stupid would it be to fall and break your neck on your first night here? Even worse, it could be misinterpreted — not a suicide, but an act of total hubris, like one of those assholes that pays sherpas to herd them up Everest and gets left up there to embalm, or that guy who starved himself in Alaska. A colonist in unfriendly territory, wandering around where he shouldn’t. 

The worst thing Richard can imagine happening after his death is being ashamed of it. 

The sky rumbles above him, like it’s clearing its throat, but he’s still busy thinking when he feels the ground snap. 

Richard looks up and notices the alder tree is on fire; then rain starts to pour down on his head. The whole thing is dreamlike. He bolts out of the woods to his station and scrambles up the ladder. Only inside, safe in the tower, does he remember to breathe.

“Hey Jared?"

“Richard, are you alright? You sound—”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine—“

“I just saw this enormous bolt of lightning,” Jared says, morbidly excited.

“Yeah. Yeah. That was about twenty feet away from me.” 

“Are you safe?” 

“Yes. God.”

Richard digs out some blankets and switches on the space heater. Even from inside, he smells the wet burning leaves. He has a three-hundred and sixty degree view of the park — every mountain, every violet patch of trees, every terrifying gorge.

He knows an omen when he sees one; his life is full of them. He can’t fucking stand it.

* * *

It’s four in the morning and he’s in an imaginary argument with his fake college ex-girlfriend. 

Well, she’s not fake. She just wasn’t really his girlfriend. Their sophomore year, he went with her to Marin over Thanksgiving break and slept on the daybed and her family just assumed, and they both went along with it. Not because he’s uncomfortable with himself, but he’s not not uncomfortable with himself, either. It made everyone happy. And the family is rich, and they go skiing at Big Bear, and Monica bought him an expensive sweater last Christmas, which he still wears, and when they quote broke up, it was hardly a big deal. She graduates and takes the job in DC. He ends up here. 

_So what’s going on, Richard? Is this, like, coping, is it a manic episode — what's happening._

_It’s a job, okay?_

_What is it? What’s the actual job?_

_First of all, it’s a fellowship. It’s legitimate. I’m supposed to, like, monitor the wildfires, and it’ll be part of a computer model to map how they behave. And then I’m doing lookout stuff. I’m a lookout. And I’m doing cartography again and I’m getting way more fit, and_

_You are not an experienced outdoorsman. You quit Boy Scouts in eighth grade. It’s reckless. And isolating yourself like this is not healthy. You’ll just be up all night in your treehouse—_

_Doing what? There’s no Internet._

_You don’t need the Internet when you can fill the void being obsessed with this stranger._

_No, I’m not. We’re just talking to each other. A lot. That’s all. It’s not a big deal._

Then it’s not her voice anymore, it’s his own voice, and he zips the sleeping bag up to his neck and dozes off. He dreams that he’s driving on I-35, completely empty, during a storm. The wind picks up the car and twists it violently back and forth, which he realizes is just him turning over in his sleep. In some far corner, he hears Jared. He can’t hear what he’s saying, just the inflections and the patter until finally around Wichita the highway ends, just ceases to exist, and his shitty Prius plummets into blank space, and he wakes up, encased in sweat.

“Oh, shit.” 

“Are you okay?” the voice pipes up. He has to remind himself that Jared is a real person and not something he just hallucinated. 

“Yeah. I just realized I left the mic on.” 

“Yeah,” Jared says. “You were talking in your sleep.”

“What was I saying?”

“I couldn’t tell, but whoever you were talking to, you sounded angry at her.” 

“How did—“ Richard winces. “How did you know it was a her.” 

“You were saying her name,” Jared says, his voice balanced and detached, a little embarrassed. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve always found relationships difficult.”

“We weren’t in a ‘relationship,’” he says. “I mean — it wasn’t like that. I’m not.”

“Oh. Well — I meant human relationships, of any kind.” 

“Yeah. Um. Me too.”

* * *

“I didn’t mean to overwhelm you earlier," Jared tells him, while Richard buries trackers in the ground. “It’s just something I’m curious about — why people take refuge in nature.” 

“A death wish.”

“Really?"

“No. I’m the same as everyone else — did NOLS and outdoor leadership at school. But if you’re asking philosophically why, I don’t really know.” Richard folds up his map and tucks away his Sharpie, which he’s been using to scribble down terrain and obvious landmarks — Double-Pronged Oak, Big Fucking Cliff. He hesitates, then adds: “But I don’t have any real experience — I wasn’t very, I’m not like, a full-time — I exaggerated on my resume.”

“Oh, no, don’t feel bad. I work at an assisted living facility off season.”

“Yeah?” 

“I used to, I should say.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“It was — difficult. Rewarding, but ultimately very difficult. And before that I taught high school science in central Mass. But I moved. Now I just tutor in Shasta Lake.” 

“And that’s rewarding?”

“Well, kind of,” Jared says. “Like this trimester I had to find a way to make _Moby Dick_ entertaining to a teenager.” 

“I loved _Moby Dick_ ,” Richard says. 

“Me too! But it was difficult. Kids don’t have the same attention spans.” 

"I mean, I was pretty ADHD, I just liked it. All the obsession, adventure.” 

“You’re a romantic, then.” 

“I guess,” Richard says, a little flustered. The sun is beating on his neck. “Maybe that’s why I came here. To live small, be surrounded by something bigger than yourself.” 

“Very _Walden_.” 

"Yeah, like _Walden_ , I guess, except only for three months. Also he lived monastically. No meat, no booze."

"Don’t forget chastity."

"Yeah, no sex, not that there’s much sex to be had alone in the wilderness, but whatever. Why do you think people do it?"

“I think there are different schools of thought: the transcendentalist school, where expanding your relationship to the outdoors is crucial to the betterment of oneself, spiritually — Thoreau, John Muir. And then the rationalist school, that goes outside in the pursuit of better survival skills. And sort of the chauvinist school, that says, men should have dominion over all things. Settlers, missionaries.” 

“It’s funny. I don’t like it out here all this much.” Richard tries to correct himself: “I mean, I can appreciate it, and recognize that it’s beautiful, but I don’t like it. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t hurt my feelings,” says Jared. “I’ve gotten pretty used to the landscape."

“I think I went out hoping I would find something really beautiful, and it would change me.”

“I don’t know if it works that way. You have to change yourself.” 

“I know, but it’s—“ Richard stops, then picks himself up, wiping dirt and sweat from his brow. He corrects the lull in their conversation: “So which one, which school of thought are you?” 

“Probably a transcendentalist.” Something clatters in the background; a tea mug, maybe. “I like the idea that if I am mindful, and take care of myself and my surroundings — if I live in the same rhythms as nature — then I can obtain some meaning from that. Right?”

“Like, a higher purpose?”

“No,” Jared says. "I mean, sure, but I need a regular purpose.” 

Richard puts away his equipment and looks out at the canyon. It’s a clear morning, and the landscape is much less menacing in the sunshine; all the same rough mountains and canyons and walls of pine trees look friendly, pastoral. He can see the snarled arm of a birch tree sticking out of the river, dried bone-white in the sun. 

“I don’t know if I should be here,” says Richard.

“You’re really doing quite well. Honestly.” 

“Thanks.”

“And I like talking to you.” 

“Me too.”

* * *

In Richard’s dream, he’s walking through a green field, and he’s thinking: _Sometimes I think about killing myself, but not in a serious way. It’s more like, if I give myself the power to think about it, but don’t do it, that’s self-control, right?_

“That’s probably not the healthiest way to think, but whatever helps you cope,” says the voice on the radio. Richard sees a figure, gray and wispy, between the alders. 

“What the fuck?” he shouts, suddenly incensed. “Get out of my dream.”

“I thought this was my dream,” says Jared. “Did we end up in the same one by mistake? Sorry, I’ll go.” 

“Hey, wait,” Richard says. “I want to see what you look like.”

Jared turns back and faces him. But he can’t make out any meaningful features. He sees shirtsleeves and thin wrists, but no face. 

“That’s funny,” Jared says, stepping closer. “I can see what _you_ look like.”

Richard reaches out and tries to feel his brow, the ridge of his nose, the cleft above his lip. Then, forgetting he’s in a dream, he gets embarrassed, and pulls his hands away; but Jared grabs his wrists. They’re frozen there a moment. 

Then Jared turns into a fawn and bolts away. 

“You’re kidding me,” Richard says, to empty space. 

* * *

“Richard. Richard — wake up.” 

He’s awake again. He notices the foam sleeping mat is clawed — maybe mice? Fingernails? Investigate later. 

“I’m sorry,” Richard blurts, “I don’t know what that was, I—"

“No, no,” says Jared, as though he knows exactly what he’s talking about, but there are more pressing things: “Are you looking at the fire? To the northeast.” 

“First one of the season,” he hears Jared say. “All this dry heat. Those pines always go first. But they have this resin on them — the fire opens it up, and it spreads the seeds. See? Stasis, fire, rebirth.” 

“Huh.” 

“Are you looking?” Jared asks. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I wish — I wish you were here. To tell me all this stuff.” 

“Me too,” Jared says, quietly. “But just look. It’s beautiful.” 

“I guess,” Richard says. But when he looks at the fire, he’s terrified. 

* * *

“Do you believe in hell?”

“Not in my culture.”

“Okay, me neither.” Richard’s back in the woods, freshly shaven, finally starting to feel lucid. He’s taken to walking with the radio in his hand, just so they can talk while he works. “Not in the sense of traditional circles of hell. But hypothetically, we go somewhere when we die, right? Would you accept that with proof?”

“I’m open to the idea without proof.” 

“And are we judged there?”

“Some people say only God can judge us, but I haven’t found that to be true.” Jared pauses, thoughtful as ever. “When this place was discovered by — um, that’s a contentious phrase — when settlers found this place, and took it. Millions of lives were destroyed. Were they judged? Certainly. They died from syphilis or the cold. History looks back on them unkindly. But they didn’t see that. They were probably quite proud of themselves.”

“So?”

“What I’m saying is, don’t be too hard on yourself. We’re surrounded by history and history is full of mistakes." 

“So we’re surrounded by mistakes.” 

"Sooner or later this area will be totally destroyed by forest fires. That’s a sort of cosmic judgment. And then eventually, the whole state will crumble off and fall into the ocean.” 

“That’s too bad,” Richard says. “I always wanted to live in San Francisco, at least once.”

"Well, it’s not too late,” says Jared. 

Richard looks up at the sky, thick with smoke, and clears his throat. “Okay. Read me more tree facts.”

* * *

He has to wait for the fire to burn through, so he can come back to record the data. But it doesn’t burn through; it spreads. Richard stays inside, curled by the sleeping bag, the radio cradled to his ear. 

"Here’s another thought,” Jared says. "The afterlife is not within our comprehension."

“How so?"

"Your body and mind don’t exist, so you don’t have to experience time the same way. Or you could be experiencing all of time at once."

"Like Dr. Manhattan?"

"Minus the war crimes, yes."

"You make being dead sound kind of exciting." 

"I’m not saying — I really am trying to keep you alive, here, Richard."

Richard sits up. "How do you mean?"

"It sounds awful, but you’re doing much better since you got here,” Jared says, nonchalant. “And I know it’s not in my hands. But. I want to help you. I’ve always wanted to help you."

_Sometimes I think about killing myself._

"That’s really fucked,” Richard snaps, without thinking. “What are you talking about? That’s fucked.” 

"I’m sorry. I told you, my social cues are — I’m not good at relationships, any relationships — "

"No I’m just. Why are you here? Why do you know all this stuff?"

"I don’t know. This has never happened before."

“Did you know I was trying to kill myself, before that fucking lightning bolt hit? Was _that_ you?"

“No! I didn’t — really, I didn’t know anything until I heard you talking in your dream—“

“Why the fuck are you in my dreams?”

“Richard, I don’t know. I don’t.” 

"You keep asking why I’m here. Well — I’ll tell you — it’s because I wasn’t good enough. I’m not good enough."

"You don’t have to be good here. You can just exist."

"But you’re good, Jared. You’re good without even trying. I’m not. I’m just not."

Jared seems genuinely stunned. The line crackles for a bit. Richard thinks he hears him breathing. Outside, the wind picks up, and the coyotes start yipping. 

“Jared.” He’s begging him to say something else. He’s become obsessed with his voice, which always sounds like it’s breaking, like he’s letting him in on a guilty secret he’s thrilled to be sharing. It’s a lifeline. 

“You’re doing this to hurt yourself,” Jared says. 

“I need to go to bed.” 

* * *

In his dream they are lost in the fire. 

Richard tears through the forest like a coyote, chasing after his voice. Finally they find each other and make love, hot coals burning into his back. He falls into hell, and Jared picks him up, arms encircling his waist, white shirtsleeves and delicate hands. 

It isn’t actually a sex dream until he wakes up and jerks off and then realizes there are pine needles in his hair. He left the blinds open. The sky is red with dust and smoke. 

The radio crackles and he hears Jared, who sounds breathy, flustered: “I just got the word. We need to evacuate.” 

“Wait for me,” Richard says. 

* * *

Except he panics and leaves his expensive university equipment behind, and then gets terribly lost, with only his map and radio to fend for himself with. Every space seems unfamiliar; the footpaths seem to disappear. 

Eventually he finds a field full of dry grass, and sits down against a rock, catching his breath. The helipad is still miles away. His knees want to murder him; he’s bruised and scraped and sweaty, and he can’t remember why he ever found this romantic. He could stay here. It would be easy. 

“Where are you?” 

"I keep going in circles,” Richard says, on the verge of tears.

"Do you want me to come find you?"

"No. No I can’t —" 

“I’m going to come find you.”

“I’m in this — this field, near the alder grove.”

“From the dream,” Jared says.

“Where you turned into a fawn — why a fawn, by the way?” he asks. “Am I dangerous to you? Is that it?" 

“Just stay there. Just breathe.”

While Richard sits there, waiting, he finds himself reevaluating his needs. He never wants to damage someone the way he has Jared; he wants to stop leaving a forest fire in his wake, wherever he goes. 

“Hey,” he hears Jared shouting. That wrinkle in his voice is still there, even without the radio static. Then he’s beside him, looping an arm over his shoulder. “Hey — Richard. Let’s get going, okay?” 

Richard looks up into his face. _I went out hoping I would find something really beautiful, and it would change me._

“You’re really beautiful,” he says.

“So are you.” Jared smiles, tersely. “But I didn’t change you.” 

They get to the rescue helicopters, huddled around each other. Everything they left burns down. 

* * *

They both get fired. Richard spends about a week in Jared's bed in Shasta Lake. They barely do anything; he just missed a proper mattress, and human contact, animal warmth. 

They find a place in San Francisco even though they can’t afford it. Jared teaches English; Richard cycles through jobs, starting businesses, tanking them, watching bubbles burst and colleagues burn out. 

They have mostly separate dreams in the bed they share, but on occasion they discover each other, having wandered into the same strange worlds.

**Author's Note:**

> at the start of college, i started writing fic about the smart and really quite touching relationship of these two characters played by two improv guys I liked. i started writing this AU story about them -- but it never quite came together. now, about three years later (?) I rewrote it the way I wanted it to feel. 
> 
> so there is something a little elegiac about this, because it's a part of my life i already put away, two characters i'm taking out of the box again. it's creaky and emotional and I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> emmabovvary / xianezone are my tumblrs


End file.
